Full Albums: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

A Full Album post of covers of Nebraska? Surely, you say, Cover Me has done this before. Well, I have checked, and whilst we have published posts about officially released full album versions of Born in the U.S.A., Darkness on the Edge of Town, and Tunnel of Love, as well as our Best Ever of Bruce covers piece, and even reviews of Nebraska tribute albums here and there and here again, we actually haven’t. So then, cometh the day, and this man’s job is to find ten Nebraska covers, one of each song, while avoiding as much duplication as is possible. You up for that?

Nebraska is, of course, the set of demos that Springsteen laid out for his follow-up to The River, ahead of realizing they sounded mighty fine as they were, without any E Street embellishments. The world agreed, as it sold by the truckload, going Platinum in the U.S and Australia, Gold in the U.K. and Canada, with many proclaiming it still to be his best. It is certainly a different beast from the juggernaut productions he’s known for, applying just his voice, harmonica, and some guitars. Never had he, or has he since, sounded so raw and true.

Chicken Mambo – Nebraska (Bruce Springsteen cover)

It surely takes an Italian bluesman to transform this grim ditty about Charles Starkweather into a Cajun romp, but Fabrizio Poggi, the harp maestro behind Chicken Mambo, is your man. Starting slow, with a gentle breeze of accordion to back the languid vocal, gradually it picks up steam, an acoustic guitar waltzing in for the second verse, before drums kickstart les bon temps. Dobro gilds the lily, before Poggi adds some maudlin campfire harmonica, and it is all rather fetching. Poggi has quite the track record, playing with many a blues and gospel artist, from Guy Davis, through Garth Hudson and the Blind Boys Of Alabama. This track comes from a 1995 Italian tribute album to Bruce, entitled For You, featuring (largely) Italian artists. Certainly makes you want to hear more from Poggi.

Ed Harcourt – Atlantic City (Bruce Springsteen cover)

“Atlantic City” is one of the most covered tracks on the album. For me the fun comes from finding the good one that others love a little less. British music mag Uncut used to do magnificent cover discs, addressing various artists of merit, and commissioning requisite covers. I guess the cutthroat finances of a dwindling print platform have reduced that capability, their cover discs now more curated selections of existing material. This comes from two alternate Springsteen discs they made, back in 2003, meaning dual purchases of the same magazine to ensure both copies (Of course I did!). Ed Harcourt, quiet of late, but with a worthy back catalogue of indie appeal, pounds his pain for this, his drawling diction having you hang on for the words, which adds to the overall charisma of performance.

Redlands Palomino Company – Mansion on the Hill (Bruce Springsteen cover)

Redlands Palomino Company are/were a British group, one of the small (and increasing) number of class country and Americana outfits, coming on here all Cowboy Junkies, the renditions a mix of evocative vocals, exquisite steel and goosebumps. From yet another Springsteen tribute, entitled The Nebraska Sessions, it is worth seeking out. Al the tracks were recorded “live”, in a single day, at London’s celebrated music pub, The Betsy Trotwood, home still of a vibrant UK “Anglicana” scene. David Rothon, the steel guitar player, currently puts out solo steel material for Clay Pipe Music, a boutique label specializing in ambient music, and he, and the label, are well worth a gander. The singer is Hannah Elton-Wall.

The Wild Magnolia Mariachis – Johnny 99 (Bruce Springsteen cover)

Starting off as seeming little different from the original, these plucky Germans then layer on a stack of levels that expand the rockabilly and some, adding honkytonk piano and wailing harp, and ultimately some brass. To be fair, my least favorite track on Bruce’s template, this offers sufficient embellishment to gain all my approval, with the slide guitar it closes with serving as the cherry on the bomb. OK, I was maybe hoping for some solo trumpet, named as they are, but, as their website cites: “The 8-piece ‘Wild Magnolia Mariachis’ cheekily slap the audience’s own musical mixture around the ears with two guitars, piano and Hammond, a pumping rhythm section and a fat wind set.” That’ll do for me fine!

George Ball – Highway Patrolman (Bruce Springsteen cover)

This is the most important song on Nebraska–at least, it is for me. With it being peak Boss, any cover has to be darn good, and a whole lot more. George Ball, by playing it about as straight as can be, effortlessly nails it. A falteringly “older” vocal allies itself with a muted Ol’ Opry backing that includes mandolin and a joyous brief fiddle solo, and it is just perfect. Looking him up, it just gets better, as the song came from his CD debut Think of Me, released 10 years ago, when this veteran stage actor was 80! I’m now too scared to see how he then also tackled “Nature Boy.” (Actually very well, it turns out.) With a name like George Ball, I assumed him an established “hat act” with a solid if undistinguished back story. Now I just want to shake his hand.

The Blackeyed Susans – State Trooper (Bruce Springsteen cover)

Australia really is another country, however much that superficial veneer of similarity appears, and one clearly listening to a somewhat different soundtrack to the hemisphere duly above. The Blackeyed Susans demonstrated that, to a T, in their covers album, 2001’s Dedicated to the Ones We Love, with as odd and eclectic set of songs chosen as one might imagine. “State Trooper” is perhaps the album’s most conventional choice, along with a Dylan outlier. it otherwise accruing material by Jonathan King and Dick Powell. The band, a bit of a revolving door of Oz-rock greats, no longer included Warren Ellis (The Dirty Three, The Bad Seeds or David McComb (The Triffids), but they imbue the song with a distant raga-like mood, with no small hypnotic charm.

Pony Face – Used Cars (Bruce Springsteen cover)

We’re still in Australia for this one, as Melbourne minimalists tackle the whole of Nebraska, and I could have chosen any song from their album for this. Were there not better options, that is, but this has something a little indefinable that I just like. It is as if they have taken everything away from the song, bar (some of) the notes, putting it back together in a pharmaceutical haze. They have form with this, their PR having them described as “unhurried sonic explorers,” an epithet that carries some expectation, which they nearly deliver. (Unhurried; get it?) In truth, the whole album is worth a listen, and some of it sticks, even if this one doesn’t.

Stormy Mondays – Open All Night (Bruce Springsteen cover)

Sounding more like a cover of the (bootleg) electric Nebraska sessions, when this song went by the name of “Wanda,” or maybe not, this is a meat and potatoes rendition that carries a punch. OK, more the punch of maybe more Bob Seger or Raul Seixas, but not at all bad. I confess, I have never heard any of the fabled electric sessions, so what do I know? But Stormy Mondays, who made a full cover of the album in 2019, had just that aim, to imagine the E Street Sound interpreting the 4 track cassette version Bruce made at home. I think they do well, not least when you realize they are a Spanish band, from Andalucia. Not entirely distant strangers, guitarist, Jorge Otero, has at least guested alongside the Boss, appearing with him at a Light of Day benefit in New Jersey back in 2006.

Ben Harper – My Father’s House (Bruce Springsteen cover)

“My Father’s House” is one, if not the, most poignant of the Springsteen canon, feeling essentially autobiographical, even though it isn’t. Ben Harper is a singer and guitarist of some nuance, with a broad track record behind him, of both his own songs and an huge repertoire of covers, he often your man to give some up to date gravitas to songs of posterity. Was that, I wonder, his purpose, in this 2006 live performance, part of a show to honor Springsteen at 2009’s Kennedy Center Honors (for performing arts)? Be that it may, this performance, in front of the newly bemedaled beneficiary, takes a delight detour into more southern scenery than Springsteen himself generally travels, with his Weissenborn steel guitar, an acoustic lap guitar, somewhere between dobro and lap steel. With tremulous organ, as fragile as his voice, it is a marvelous rendition. (It isn’t even the only song Harper has covered from Nebraska, he having performed a version of “Atlantic City” for a 2013 MusiCares Springsteen tribute, in 2013, accompanied by Natalie Maines and Charlie Musselwhite.)

George Mileson – Reason To Believe (Bruce Springsteen cover)

I wanted to return to the U.K. and The Nebraska Sessions, not least as I like and admire Michele Sodart, who does a neat version of this, the album closer. Not to be, though, as George Miles, another Spaniard, pipped her to the post with this, where the song seems channeled through the band, Canned Heat. with a relentless bluesy riff, and an insistent harmonica motif. More a record producer than player, he has his own tribute album to the New Jersey icon, called Leap of Faith – A Tribute to Bruce Springsteen, and it hangs together pretty well, if sounding sometimes a little as if  recorded in different time zones. I quibble, it’s a novel revision.

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